Working the systems

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LT. GEN. CHARLES CROOM IS A SYSTEMS GUY. Scanhis r'sum' and you'll see a long list of systems-relatedassignments since he joined the Air Force 35 years ago.As a leader at the Defense Department, he also has beenat the forefront of DOD's efforts to amalgamate systemsand communications services under common technologyframeworks.

At the Defense Information Systems Agency, where herecently retired after more than three years as directorand commander of the Joint Task Force for Global NetworkOperations, Croom was a driving force behind theagency's efforts to streamline and speed its services. Forexample, DISA now offers computing and storage serviceson demand to its DOD customers.

'Before, you would have to come in and state your requirements,'Croom said. 'We would order the hardwareand three or four months later it would be delivered.Then we'd put it on the floor, establish the operating systemand you would be up and running four or fivemonths later. Today, all that stuff has been prearrangedwith a number of contractors. The hardware sits on thefloor ready to be turned on. If you need computing orstorage capacity, we can turn it on in average of 14 days.We've done it as fast as one day.'

Croom, known around DOD as Charlie, has enjoyedsuccess by being a back-to-basics kind of leader, saidHarry Raduege, chairman of the Deloitte Center forNetwork Innovation and Croom's predecessor as DISAdirector.

'He has an uncanny ability to review any problem andbring attention to its foundational elements,' Raduegesaid. 'In many ways, Charlie took DISA from good togreat by emphasizing fundamentals.' He stressed thebasics of the ABCs of developing IT products and services:Adopt first. Buy if you can't adopt. And only createas a last resort. He also insisted on testing new productsand services'to avoid delivering half-baked solutions.'Once the fundamentals were in place, Croom stressedspeed of performance, Raduege said.

Under Croom, DISA also made collaboration tools 'which are vital to DOD's network-centric programs 'faster, easier to use and less expensive to buy by establish-ing an innovative system that gives department users achoice between two sets of services developed by separatevendors. Pitting vendors against each other meansbetter deals for users.

'The great thing is that [vendors] can upgrade thosetools overnight while you sleep,' he said. 'The next dayyou come in and your collaboration suite has been upgraded,so you don't even have to go through a requirementsprocess.'

'Doing business differently always requires people tochange their views,' he said. 'I'm so very proud of mycivilian senior leadership. No matter what I've wanted todo'they've adopted it and made it work.'

Croom entered the Air Force in 1973 after receiving abachelor's degree in electrical engineering from RutgersUniversity, where he was a member of the ROTC program.Before joining DISA, he was director of informationservices and integration and chief information officerin the Air Force secretary's Office of WarfightingIntegration.

Croom is modest about his accomplishments. 'Any successI've had is'because of the people I've had the opportunityto work with, particularly at DISA.'